a:DRIVE

With entry-level PC systems shipping with 1Gb hard drives, the usefulness of the 1.44Mb floppy has become very limited, to say the least. If you need to transfer files larger than a single disk, the whole process becomes extremely complicated. First, you'll have to compress the large files, and even then you'll probably need to span them across multiple floppies.

OR Technology has tackled this problem and produced what it deems to be the answer: the a:DRIVE. This is a 3.5in unit that supports standard 720Kb and 1.44Mb floppy disks, as well as the new LS-120 optical disks with a storage capacity of 120Mb.

Installation of the a:DRIVE is simplicity itself. All you have to do is connect it to the secondary IDE channel, along with your CD-ROM drive. This will result in autodetection by the BIOS as well as Win95, making it instantly ready to use. The CD-ROM performance is in no way degraded by this configuration, and both units function happily on the same channel. Once installed, the a:DRIVE can be used in exactly the same way as your existing 3.5in floppy drive. With the addition of a BIOS upgrade, or a Promise card which adds another EIDE channel, you can even use the a:DRIVE as a bootable device, thus doing away with your old 3.5in floppy drive.

The biggest stumbling block for the a:DRIVE is that it's taken so long to reach the market, and hence competition is now strong and established. Iomega's Zip drive has been available for a year and has proved to be a very popular solution to the high-capacity data transfer problem. However, the advantage the a:DRIVE has over the Zip drive is its backward compatibility. For those among us who have limited upgrade space in their PC, the idea of a device that can replace the floppy drive rather than complement it is a desirable one. The single drive solution will also prove invaluable in the laptop market where space is the primary issue.

However, where the a:DRIVE fails to meet Iomega's challenge is in performance. OR Technology quotes an average seek time of 70ms when using the LS-120 optical disks, which is more than 2.5 times slower than the Zip drive with a time of 27ms. The difference in data transfer speeds is even more drastic.

The 33Mb Windows 95 installation directory took a staggering four minutes and 14 seconds to copy to the a:DRIVE, whereas the same copy took under a minute when transferring to a Zip. Couple with this the fact that the Zip drive is considerably cheaper than the a:DRIVE, and you begin to wonder whether OR Technology has missed the boat completely. But assuming that vendors start to ship the a:DRIVE as standard in new systems instead of a floppy, upgrade sales should soar as people try to keep up with the changing technology. Compaq has already started shipping the a:DRIVE in its otherwise woeful Deskpro 4000 (reviewed issue 26, p156).

History tells us that the 3.5in floppy disk will die and go to heaven in the same way that the 8in and 5.25in versions did. The a:DRIVE is a commendable compromise for those who don't want to abandon floppies completely, but realise that their potential for transferring data is severely limited by today's standards. It might not be as fast or as cheap as the competition, but it does the job it sets out to do with efficiency and versatility.

Author: Riyad Emeran